Bracewell’s Seth DuCharme, who served as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General in Donald Trump’s first administration, told Forbes that the administration could use the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to enhance charges that would fit into the president’s “America First” narrative following the FCPA’s 180-day review.
DuCharme explained that the administration might pass on more traditional FCPA enforcement, but still carry out the law for businesses whose work “touches on a national security or transnational organized crime priority and happen to accept money or make payments to a company in Central America with ties to cartels.” In such a hypothetical, “prosecutors could use the FCPA as a tack-on charge to material support to terrorism and criminal sanctions violations.”
DuCharme added that he’s advising his clients with business dealings in Latin America that their attention to compliance needs to go up, not down, whether FCPA is on pause or not.
